K1 Visa approved despite red flags!

[petey888 0]

Dear all Vj'ers,

I would like to start out by thanking everyone here that have posted their personal input and valuable experiences to helping us reunite with our loved ones. Sorry I haven't really updated my profile or anything, just been reading and researching here. This is my first post and a happy one =) . Here is my timeline

3/13 Met my fiancee

11/13 Came back and visit her and met her family for the 1st time

2/14 Came back with my parents, my siblings and their children for my engagement

3/14 submitted i129f

4/1/14 noa1

5/14 RFE for letter of intent 90 days from fiancee or wedding plans ( I submitted my RFE with my fiancee letter of intent to marry 90 days, with a wedding banquet restaurant deposit receipt notarizing I have made wedding plans)

6/21/14 noa 2 approved

6/29/14 packet 3 received

8/4/14 interview date

8/8/14 visa in hand.

8/15/14 Flew back spent 2 weeks and flew back with my fiancee...

I will be brief about my background. I am Vietnamese and my fiancee and I are 7 yrs apart. I only have been married once before with my ex in 2003 who was on a tourist visa, she is non Vietnamese national so i did have to go through the uscis for her AOS. But our marriage didn't last and I filed a divorce in 2006 after I found out she was having an affair. After much reading and research on this forum, I realize I now fall under the red flag bracket where I had many sleepless nights wondering if I have a chance on when I filed for a k1 visa for my current fiancee. I understood the nature of the timing of our divorce may raise a big red flag because I filed less than a year after my ex got her green card. But I felt we have a very strong case and had quality of evidence for my fiance. I originally planned to file my i129f after the 2nd trip, but held off and waited till my 3rd trip with my family to front load my evidence.

For my i129f, I submitted a declaration of how we met which includes time and date and a very brief short story of how we met, similar to a timeline but in a story format that was 3 pages long. I also was advised by an immigration service whom I used to submit my i129f to state on the last paragraph briefly about my ex wife.The evidence I submitted were tickets, credit card statements, pics. a few pages of chat logs and phone logs for each month, a few money transfer to her, greeting cards I had sent to her, my divorce decree, the i325, and my declaration of how we met which also states my intent to marry her as well. I believe it was no more than 30 pics I sent in. Those pics included me and her family the 2nd visit to VN, and many family pics of my family and I visiting her the 3rd visit and a few of our engagement pics. Our engagement was a decent size, only 9 tables at the restaurant with both side of our family and her friends. Banquet cost us about 1500-1700 US.

Weeks before her interview, I sent her my i134 along with 3 yrs of tax return, the previous year tax transcript, letter of employment from my current employer, w2's, 3 recent pay check stubs, another certification divorce decree from the court house records, an official notarize timeline, updated letter of intent to marry 90 days from the both of us, along with whatever documents the packet 3 requires.

Day of interview, I prepped her with 2 binders of evidence, one before engagement and one after. These evidence are more in depth of all the receipts, chat logs, voice calls, and pics. Her interview wasn't that long, she arrived at 9 something, appointment time was at 10:30, and was done at around 12ish. She told me a lot of women coming in for their interview were crying. Maybe 8 out of 10 were getting blue slips or had failed. My fiancee met a very nice officer who interviewed her. The only evidence was asked for were our pics, she looked thru it, none of the engagement photos were looked at. She commented on how happy we were in our pics together, she saw pics of my family spending time with her in VN and asked her how my mom felt about her? What is my nephew's name in that pic? Has she made plans on her wedding dress? Lastly if my fiancee knew what I was currently wearing? Funny thing is my fiancee asked me this just right before she enters knowing she might get asked something random as this hehe..and that was it! she passed!!! She was quoted 7-10 days for visa arrival due to the recent Visa system nightmare they were having but she got it 4 days later =) .....

In retrospect, I figured she would have gotten a blue slip asking for 10 yr residency plus probably my ex current address information but none was asked. In hindsight, I believe the quality of evidence, when i said quality, i'm talking about pics and receipts of air tix of your family here in the states coming over for both family meeting and engagement ceremony must have outweighed the red flags. Or it could be luck or it could be both that we are now together. If you have red flags, I think by providing and front loading a lot of quality evidence would paint a clear pic of whomever that is viewing your case that there is no doubt in their mind that your relationship is a bonafide relationship and that it is not a sham. But for those of you that don't have any redflags, then really, you don't have to go to the extreme to outweigh the quality of evidence for your case and shouldn't stress about it. I also wouldn't have paid 900 bucks for the immigration service either before finding visajourney.com . I wish you all good luck on your journey. Now to the next journey AOS realm lol.

[frontgear 194]

Congrats and thank you for posting your experience.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Many congrats. You show that being proactive and spending additional time with fiancee is worth the extra time. Patience is the key in going through this journey. Good luck and God bless.

[natalie.le 10]

congrats on everything!

question: how did you get the packet 3 so quickly after your noa2?

[heo luoi 206]

Whats a blue slip? so they disqualified 80% of interviewees?

[natalie.le 10]

Blue slip is what they give out to ask the interviewees to bring missing documents or additional proof (birth cert, letter of intent etc). On my interview day a lot of girls didnt speak english and still got approved. Good luck!